This invention relates to systems for locating the geographic origination of the initiator of a telephone call and more particularly to one that uses voice recognition to determine the locational designator of the caller without the need to correlate the initiator's telephone number to other databases.
In the field of telephone call processing, current art provides a process that allows a client (user of the invention) to use a single telephone number to connect initiators who dial that telephone number to one of a plurality of recipients. The selection of recipient is based on the geographic origination of the call and client-defined criteria. Some examples of location based routing with pluralities of recipients include “800”-type numbers (for example 800, 888, 877, 866, and 900 applications, among others), applications where the recipient pays for the call, dealer locator systems, local routing based on a published local number, and emergency numbers, such as “911” in the U.S. These are but a few examples of location-based routing.
The initiator's telephone number is identified using Automatic Number Identification (ANI). The ANI is often correlated to a unique geographic reference, such as Vertical/Horizontal (VH) coordinates, latitude/longitude (lat/lon), ZIP+4, or a locational designator for example. A predefined method is used, such as an on-line computation or a database lookup, to match the ANI and/or its locational designator to one of a plurality of a client's recipients corresponding to one of a plurality of territorial designators, and the call is sent to the appropriate recipient telephone number.
ANI-based systems, such as the one described above, work correctly when the call is placed from a fixed location telephone, and the ANI that is forwarded matches the initiator's telephone number. Local telephone companies operating in areas without equal-access do not provide ANI; as a result the ANI is often 0000000000, as compared with a normal ANI of 4076823022. Local phone companies have begun offering to their customers “ANI blockage” or “no ANI forwarded” packages. Calls placed from cellular phones present another set of problems in terms of locating the point of origin of the call.
When using a cellular telephone, the ANI reported is often not the ANI of the cellular phone, but that of a standard land line where the cellular phone connects. This connection point is called a trunk line. The phone number that is reported is called the pseudo-ANI. The particular cellular company to which the caller subscribes assigns a pseudo-ANI to this trunk line. The trunk line's pseudo-ANI is then used for call processing, instead of the telephone number of the cellular phone. When calling from a given cellular phone, the pseudo-ANI that forwarded is the same for any cellular telephone caller for the trunk line, regardless of the physical location of the caller.
Another problem arises in trying to determine the geographic location from where a cellular caller initiates. If an initiator dials an 800 number from home using a standard telephone, the initiator's locational designator will always be the same. With a cellular phone, however, if an initiator were to place two calls 5 minutes apart while driving on an interstate, for example, it is highly possible that the second call would have a locational designator 4-6 miles away from the locational designator of the first call. A third call could give yet a different locational designator.
An additional problem exists when people place calls from cellular phones to 800 numbers. The recipient of the call, who also pays for the call, does not receive an accurate ANI that can be used to identify who made the call. Often, there is not a way to get back in touch with a caller. As the use of cellular phones increases, the impact of ‘unknown’ calls from cellular phones can be significant to a business relying on 800 type numbers.
The lack of an effective system for locating cellular-telephone callers is a grave concern, particularly in emergency situations, criminal acts on people, and any situation where a person does not know where he or she is located. This is also a problem in systems such as dealer locator systems, where the location of the caller must be known before the call can connect to the final destination.
Therefore, in view of the above, a need exists to find a different method to determine the exact location of a call initiator. This method is based on using the initiator's verbal response to a series of computer-generated questions, digitizing the answers to those questions using voice recognition technology, and using those answers to further process the call. It is important to remember that there is a difference between Voice Response Units, which are typically used to speak back information to the caller, and Voice Recognition, which digitizes the caller's vocal input and uses that digitized input to perform additional processing.